


Unstopped

by Xarrior



Series: Time Travel Zedaph [2]
Category: Hermitcraft RPF, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, aaaa i dont really write sad things, all hermits will be mentioned but thats about it, have to admit tango doesnt stick around for long, or multichapter i have no idea how this will go, there will be a happy ending dw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:01:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 12,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29224362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Xarrior/pseuds/Xarrior
Summary: What happens when one day, suddenly, everything stops? Everything except for Zedaph.Highly recommend that you read "Time Travel: Less Helpful Than You'd Think" before reading this. Short story short, Zed can time travel.
Series: Time Travel Zedaph [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2145705
Comments: 81
Kudos: 82





	1. Just a Prank

“What about... ghasts?”

“Maybe... Would they even shoot at the golems though?”

“No idea. Only one way to find out?”

Zedaph and Tango were hanging out in the Cave of Contraptions, currently spitballing ideas for how Tango might like to... ahem, _relieve_ iron golems of their iron in a potential future iron farm. Tango had been there for a while, taking a well-deserved break from working on his current projects. Their conversation in general had been a bit of a brain-storming session while Zed sat in an alcove he’d made in the wall, not particularly high, multitasking by working on some not too tricky redstone while they talked. Tango was down on the cave floor nearby, idly pacing about, as he often did when they discussed their ideas.

Apparently Tango was spending a little while debating Zed’s suggestion in his head. “Eh. I dunno. Everyone’s _seen_ ghasts before. Ravagers and drowned with tridents- they were all new and exciting.” 

“But no one’s ever seen a ghast killing _iron golems_!” Zed pointed out. “I mean, who builds golem’s in the nether?”

“True. I’ll think about it.”

Meanwhile, Zed was starting to get inspired by the conversation for his own potential projects. “Hm... What if I got a ghast in here for a contraption?”

He heard the sound of Tango clapping his hands together in excitement. “That sounds like a _terrible_ idea and it would be _hilarious_. Please do it.”

“I’m glad you care so much for my safety.” Zed deadpanned sarcastically.

“I care more for my amusement.” Tango said with a smirk. “What contraption would use a ghast anyway?”

“Um...” Zed thought for a couple seconds, before saying the first idea that popped into his head. “You press a button to reveal the ghast... it’d be in the wall- or ceiling? Can they shoot down? Anyway, it’d be somewhere. And now you have a ghast shooting at you.”

“Wow! Just what I’ve always wanted!”

He laughed. “Okay, maybe not.”

“That’d be a good way to destroy contraptions you don’t like. Just pull a lever, and BAM - down comes the fireballification.”

“Very barbaric...” The idea wasn’t bad, it needed a bit of refinement though. “I like that idea but I’ve never needed to _destroy_ contraptions really-”

Tango stopped his pacing to look up towards the alcove. “It’s a ghast, it’s gonna be destroying something.”

“Hmm. Okay, what if I faced it towards the bits of the mountain that still need digging out? Pull a lever, stand in front, and let the ghast do it for me?”

“Oh! I like that! Do you have that much more to dig out though?”

“Not really.”

“Aw. Well, that sounds like-“

Zed had still had half his attention focused on his redstone, so It took him a couple of seconds of silence to realise that Tango hadn’t finished his sentence. He peeked over the edge of the ledge he was sat on.

“Sounds like what?”

Tango didn’t respond. He didn’t even move. That was... weird?

“Tango?”

No response.

“Tango, you alright?”

No response. This was getting ridiculous. Zed shuffled over to hop off the ledge and move towards Tango, thinking he might have spaced out or something. 

Zed playfully waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Hellooooo? Anyone home?”

But Tango didn’t react to that. How bizarre...

“Tango? You good?”

He tried touching him on the arm, but that didn’t get a reaction either. It was like he had just... frozen? Like time had stopped?

Ohhh... Tango must be poking fun at his time travel! By _pretending_ that time had stopped! Ever since learning about his powers, Tango and Impulse had found the whole thing rather novel. Each time they hung out Zed could expect some sort of little comment or joke or prank, and he didn’t mind it really; he liked to poke fun at them for little things too, such as not being able to time travel - it was all in good fun.

So this must just be a prank. What a relief!

“Ha ha, very funny. But I know I can’t make time stop.” He tried to give Tango a friendly shove, expecting him to fall away laughing now that he’d figured out the act.

He didn’t move.

“Tango, stop it, I’m serious.” Any second now, he expected Tango to break, and finally laugh at his concerned reaction to this very unkind prank. But that would be unusual; Tango wasn’t normally _this_ mean...

Was there something wrong with him? Zed wasn’t quite sure what to do.

“I’m... gonna go find someone...”

With a bit of hesitation, He went to go pick up his elytra from his storage, then made his way to his front door. Surely if Tango was going to give up the act, it’d be now, right? Just before dragging another hermit into the situation. He paused at the door for a few seconds, waiting to hear Tango call out to him from across the cave, but it didn’t happen. The commitment of this guy...

Oh well. If Tango wanted to drag someone else into this then so be it. The most obvious person to go to would be Impulse, as his base was closest and he’d most likely be there.

=====

The landing inside Impulse’s base wasn’t graceful nor elegant. He landed hard on the stone floor with too much momentum, so that he had to jog a few paces to stop himself from tumbling over. But nevertheless, he’d made it. 

He could see Impulse crouching over by his storage, in the middle of searching through a chest. It was a bit surprising that he apparently hadn’t heard him show up, given his dramatic landing.

Zed called out to him, “Hey, Impulse?”

Impulse didn’t turn around, he didn’t seem to react in any way. Was he that absorbed in searching through his storage? Or was he also in on the potential ‘ignore Zedaph’ prank?

Zed made his way over to him, assuming that he was just too distracted to have noticed him. 

“Impulse?” he said, as he touched him on the back to try and get his attention, and then tried to shake his shoulder.

No response.

“Impulse!” 

No response.

“Impulse, stop it! This isn’t funny!” He stopped trying to shake his shoulder and instead started trying to shove him out of frustration. Nothing had much effect. Impulse would not move.

Was there really still a chance this was all a prank? It seemed hard to believe, but any alternatives weren’t much nicer to think about. If it was a prank, Impulse and Tango weren’t being very good sports about it. This felt like the definition of ‘going too far’ and Zed was getting worried. His attempts to get Impulse to acknowledge him were going nowhere, so the next most logical action would be to look for _another_ hermit, while planning to chew out his friends for being overly mean to him later when this was all sorted out.

Well, the next nearest location where he could reasonably expect a hermit to be would be the shopping district...

=====

After a similarly rushed and ungraceful landing to the one that happened in Impulse’s base, he was stood in the middle of main street, not really sure where to go. He wanted to find another hermit, one less likely to be trying to mess with him, so maybe town hall was a good bet? 

As Zed made his way up the stairs towards the town hall, sure enough, not one, but three hermits came into view: Scar, Cub, and Bdubs, standing off to the side of the diamond throne. It wasn’t a welcome sight, however. To see three people caught in a tableau like this was somehow _much_ more unsettling than seeing just a single person. Cub and Bdubs were in the middle of exchanging some looks, Cub’s expression was confident while Bdubs’ looked a little sour. Scar seemed oblivious to the other two’s apparent rivalry, instead his attention was on Jellie, who was lazing across part of the diamond throne. Zed couldn’t guess what they had been discussing, all he knew was that not a single one was moving.

He couldn’t help but feel a little awkward standing there, like he was intruding or spying on their conversation somehow, but despite this he took a step into the building and called out hesitantly.

“...Hello?”

No response, of course. 

Tentatively, he stepped over to Cub, who was closest, and tried to give his shoulder a shake. Just like with Tango and Impulse, there was no reaction, and absolutely no moving him. He might as well have been trying to get a reaction out of an armour stand statue.

Zed didn’t bother trying the same thing with Scar or Bdubs. Instead, he raced back down the town hall steps to the main road, desperately looking for some indicator of _something_ happening.

He looked up towards the trees. On an ordinary day a light ocean breeze could be expected to be causing the leaves to sway, but now each and every one was still. That wasn’t right... 

He turned around to look up at the town hall clock. 11:42, it read. It only had an hour and minute hand though, and he wasn’t going to wait around staring at it for long enough to figure out if it was moving, so...

He had an idea: he had to get to the edge of the shopping district island. He forwent the roads in favour of making a beeline through the foliage around the town hall to reach the edge of the cliffs as quickly as possible. When the ocean came into view, he stopped, and stared at it. In his rush to figure out what was going on, he hadn’t paid attention while he was flying over the water; what should have been gentle waves gliding idly across the surface as usual, now more resembled a image silently trapped in a photograph. The waves were there, but they were still.

The reality of the situation was starting to hit him.

What happened with Tango back in the Cave of Contraptions could have been a very dedicated, very well executed, very mean prank. What happened with Impulse could have been the two being in on it, despite that being an unusually callous joke for their standards. What was going on here, there was absolutely _no way_ this was fake.

Zedaph had jumped through time countless times - purposefully and accidentally - but in all his experience traversing the timeline, he had _never_ encountered something like _this_.

Time had _stopped_.

What had he done?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the entire premise of this fic is slightly ironic bcus in kris and jack's superpower givaway (spoilers), jack was actually the one that stopped time and couldn't start it again. would've been neat if it was kris but oh well lol  
> ... i actually dont know if most people know about kris and jack... if u dont, go watch them i stg- (kris is zed)


	2. Shopping Spree

Zed was struggling to process the awful realisation he’d sent himself through. An overwhelming number of questions of _how_ and _what_ and _why_ forced their way into his head, and he didn’t have any answers. He was vaguely aware that he was shaking, and thought to sit himself down in the grass so that he wouldn’t collapse. 

He couldn’t take his gaze off of the frozen ocean. Not frozen in the ‘Ooh pretty icebergs’ way, but frozen in a ‘Oh no what have I done did I break time’ kind of way, which was entirely less pleasant to be faced with. The image he was looking at didn’t make any sense, it was like his mind couldn’t process it. For something so expansive that’s supposed to be _constantly_ moving to suddenly be completely still... it didn’t make any sense. 

_None_ of this made any sense. _Zedaph could not stop time_. He was certain of it - and as certain as he was that he couldn’t stop time, he was certain he couldn’t _start_ it either. 

That... might be a problem...

Okay, calm, breathe. It wouldn’t do him any good to just sit here panicking in the bushes now, would it? After giving himself a couple minutes to collect his thoughts (definitely not enough time but he was impatient), Zed pushed himself up slowly and started to make his way back to the roads, retracing his steps through the foliage. He had suddenly become acutely aware of how _loud_ his footsteps were, even on soft grass. There was no more constant drone of ocean noise, and not a single whisper of wind. The only thing in the world making any sound was him.

Once back in front of the town hall, he took another seat on the town hall steps. At least it was a marginally less pathetic place to have a panic than in the bushes- no, he wasn’t going to panic. He was going to think.

Zed tried his best to think back to the moment when this had all started - when he’d supposedly stopped time. He had been talking with Tango, but not about anything particularly notable. Nothing had happened that had startled him, which is what would normally cause an accidental time jump (not that this situation was in any way _normal_ ). He hadn’t even been thinking about time travel! Admittedly it wasn’t out of the question for a spontaneous accidental time jump to occur, but to spontaneously accidentally _stop time_? Something he hadn’t even considered he might be able to do? That concept was beyond belief.

Still, if he had done this, surely that meant it was worth attempting to _undo_ it, right? 

He glanced around the area, looking for any kind of object he could pick up; he wanted a more solid indicator of success that he could focus on, as well as to test a theory. A couple of the decorative diamonds that had fallen off the trees caught his eye - honestly, who just leaves actual _money_ laying around like that? Well, rich people, he supposed. Regardless, he went over to pick up a diamond, then let it go in the air. Just as he’d expected, the moment he let it go, it just hung there, frozen. That was certainly going on the list of weird sights that didn’t make sense that he’d seen today.

Now for the big moment. Zed brought the diamond with him to sit back down on the stairs, then left it hanging in the air just in front of him. If the diamond fell, he’d know he was successful in restarting time. He wasn’t sure exactly _how_ he was going to try and do this, since this wasn’t like the time jumping he was so used to; this was something entirely different. 

He had to focus, he had to focus harder than he’d ever focused on anything else in his life. He screwed his eyes tightly shut, and thought as many ‘time-starting’ thoughts as he possibly could. It was never this difficult to jump through time, but this was no ordinary task. Any second now, he’d hear the sound of the diamond clattering to the floor... any second now... any second...

Silence.

An involuntary noise of frustration left him. How could this be so hard?? How can it be so easy to accidentally stop time but impossible to purposefully start it? What a cruel joke! 

But that begged the question: did his regular time travel even still work? That felt fairly important to find out, as if it didn’t, his options would be even more limited. He shut his eyes, preparing to test it by jumping forward to... when he’d walked to the other end of the street? That should be an easy enough test.

>>>>>

Sure enough, he was stood at the other end of the street, just about where he’d expected to end up. So he could still affect his place in his own timeline as usual; that was good, it could come in handy. He doubted it would have any effect on other people however. 

Apparently he was right, as when he ran back down the street and up the town hall stairs to check on them, Cub, Scar, and Bdubs were all exactly as he’d left them. Not that if they _had_ been about 30 seconds into their future, Zedaph would’ve known what to do with that information. It just confirmed that his regular time travel wouldn’t help him with the whole restarting-time situation specifically. Excellent, so the one thing he knew he _could_ do wouldn’t even be useful to fix this. Brilliant.

The last 15 minutes (from Zed’s point of view) had been a lot of running around in circles in a bit of a panic without accomplishing much. He instinctively looked back at the town hall clock without thinking. It still read 11:42, funnily enough - what a pointless look.

Zed made a decision: he was not going to keep running around in circles, not knowing what to do. Instead, he was going to wander around the shopping district, not knowing what to do. Look, if he couldn’t use his powers to restart time, what else could he do? It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was preferable to being completely stuck in place. At least it would give him some kind of goal. Perhaps he’d stumble upon a few more frozen hermits. That might be interesting.

Walking through the shopping district was... slightly surreal in this state. Everything was essentially the same as it had always been, but the atmosphere was just a _little_ bit off. There was no ambient noise whatsoever, once again reminding Zed just how loud his footsteps were when there was no other sound to drown them out. The first time he opened a door that was a little creaky, he was slightly startled, having not expected to hear a sound that didn’t come directly from him.

Each shop he passed by he ducked his head into, just in case there was a hermit to be found in there. At there very least, this was an opportunity to check out the interiors of shops that he had never had a reason to enter. He wasn’t exactly one for frequent shopping trips.

The first hermit that Zed encountered was Doc, who had been walking down the path nearby the potions shop. He’d been reading something off of a bit of paper - a shopping list perhaps? It didn’t seem important so Zed didn’t care to snoop. It was a little odd to see that Doc had been caught mid-stride, which made him look very much off balance without the momentum of walking. Zed almost worried that he’d topple over if he got too close, before remembering that gravity was totally broken right now anyway - he’d be fine.

The next hermit he found was Beef, in the middle of stocking his music shop. Apparently he had just finished a new poster, which looked nice, and was putting it up for sale; his posters were a bit too expensive for Zedaph to buy though. That, and now didn’t really seem like the best time for a transaction, anyway. Out of curiosity, Zed tried plucking a string of one of the show guitars. It made the sound he’d expected, but was immediately cut off rather than ringing out. The string wasn’t able to vibrate after it made the initial sound, so it just... stopped. Huh. Weird. He suspected that ~~if~~ _when_ time started again, Beef would hear the rest of the note, and think he was being haunted or something.

After combing the shopping district reasonably thoroughly, Zed felt able to conclude that there was no one else there to be found. It hadn’t taken too long, a couple of hours maybe? He had no way to know for sure. As things stood right now, he knew the exact location and status of Tango, Impulse, Scar, Cub, Bdubs, Doc, and Beef. Including himself, that made eight hermits out of twenty-four - maybe he should start a list.

Was it worth looking for the other sixteen hermits? Well, it wasn’t like there was much else he could do. At least until he had any other ideas it’d be a decent way to pass the time...


	3. Hunt The Hermit Part 1

_ Tango - my base _

_ Impulse - his base _

_ Scar, Cub, Bdubs - town hall _

_ Doc - ~~shopping district~~ by potion shop _

_ Beef - music shop _

One stolen bit of paper and pen from the mayor’s office later, Zed had started to get a proper organised list going. He’d return the pen ~~if~~ ~~when~~ _later_ , but didn’t think Scar would miss it right now. With that sorted, all he needed to do now was figure out where to start.

Somehow that was more difficult that he’d expected, but he figured that he’d just head into the nether and visit various hermit’s bases until he stumbled across people. Now that he thought of it, he hadn’t noticed how messed up the nether portal looked when it wasn’t moving. It was another one of those things, like the ocean, that should have always had some kind of movement to it, but it just... didn’t now. He had to wonder if it would even still work...

That question was promptly answered when he stepped in, and was transported to the other dimension as usual. 

The nether had an atmosphere just as strange as the overworld, if not stranger. Lava that should’ve been flowing steadily was just still, obviously, as well as the huge molten lake down below. It wasn’t normally quite as active as the overworld’s ocean was, but there still should have been some movement, yet there was none. Particles that were normally floating about in the air now just hung there solidly, in a way that almost made Zed nervous to try flying through them.

The fire as well; that was the strangest sight of them all, and made him a little bit sad in a way. Fire was such a beautiful and interesting thing to watch, but in this state it had been reduced to just a static source of light and heat - basically a glorified lamp. He idly wondered if it would still burn things, and if so, how that would work, but decided that he’d test that out later.

Scanning the view of the nether from where he stood, Zed looked for any sign of any hermit who might’ve been flying between portals. None on this side... he moved round the portal and went to check the other side... Ah! He could clearly see someone who had been flying in the distance, blue and white, that had to be Jevin. It was actually quite lucky that it was Jevin, as he stood out a lot from the dull red of the nether atmosphere and could be easily spotted. He seemed to be the only person in the immediate vicinity though, so Zed decided that he’d just go down a few tunnels and check out whatever bases he ended up at. 

It had never quite occurred to him just how passively loud the nether was, much more so than the overworld. The eerie silence was somewhat more unnerving here than it had been around the shopping district; there was no lava pops, no crackle of fire, no ghasts crying out in the distance, and no strange echoes that had never really been explained but should definitely be present. Randomly hearing noises while travelling down nether tunnels was spooky, sure, but the noises’ absence proved to be a little spookier.

He encountered just one hermit while going down the tunnels, Ren. He was carrying a couple of shulker boxes and seemed to have been on his way to the shopping district, having been going the opposite way down the tunnel that Zed was. Maybe he was on his way to restock logs? Zed added him to the list and continued on. 

=====

The first base that he ended up at was False’s, as it was certainly the closest to the shopping district aside from Impulse’s and Tango’s. upon stepping out of her portal, it suddenly dawned on him just how massive an undertaking searching every single base would be. False’s base was _huge_ , but probably not the biggest nor the hardest to search. Never mind, he’d cross the bridges that were the other bases when we got to them.

It only took a few minutes of flying about to find False, which was wonderfully convenient. She had been flying around her base too, which made her easy to spot but also a very strange sight to see. While Jevin had been flying too, he’d been much further away and Zed hadn’t realised how ridiculous it looked for someone to essentially hover in the air, completely unmoving when they should be gliding. He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t curious about what would happen if he tried to move her, but considering the possibility that she’d just drop like a rock and get hurt or something, he resolved not to try anything. He didn’t need that weight on his conscience on top of everything else.

Back in the nether, the next closest base to check was definitely Hypno’s. When Zed went through the portal to Hypno’s islands, he damn near jumped out his skin; Hypno was _right there_ , just a couple of feet from the portal, apparently about to step in himself. Pretty inconvenient timing all things considered, but at least he’d been easy to find, disregarding the jump-scare. In total, that made 11 hermits out of 23 accounted for so far. 

If he kept up this pace, he’d find everyone in no time, but... that wasn’t quite a comforting thought though. It wasn't like time would start again once he found everyone, what would be the point of that? And if time didn’t start again by the time he’d found everyone, well, what then?

He decided not to think about it.

=====

While checking out Xisuma’s base - it was another massive one, he hadn’t got too far and X hadn’t shown up yet - Zed surprised himself with a yawn, and it occurred to him that even though the sun wasn’t moving in the sky, he had been up for hours and hours and he’d still have to sleep. The main question was, whereabouts? The Cave of Contraptions wasn’t an option; he’d made his way back there initially out of habit, but realised that Tango was still stuck there, an upsetting and unavoidable reminder of the current situation - plus, sleeping in his normal bed while Tango was right there would just be _weird_. He considered crashing in another hermit’s base, one of the unoccupied ones, but that would just feel too wrong, too empty, and just plain too new. 

Another option would have been to sleep outside under the stars somewhere, which would be peaceful, a bit like a campout. That idea had a very obvious flaw however: the sun was stuck in the sky, the stars would never come out, and it’d be far too bright to get to sleep. He had been excited for his campout idea for an embarrassingly long time before realising that night would never fall, but oh well. At least no one was able to laugh at him for not realising.

A good solution seemed to be the area below the Cave of Contraptions, where he’d dug out to keep his bulk storage. It was deep underground, so sunlight wasn’t a problem, and far enough away from Tango that he didn’t have a constant reminder of his existential loneliness!

The hole to the void did make him a bit nervous though...

Actually, no, this was a bad spot. Now that he was here, he had this... very hard to describe feeling of... bad. Wrong. Like some sort of weight on his shoulders... No, he didn’t want to stay here for long, that was for sure. 

In the end, the best answer he could come up with was claiming a small corner of the area beneath the Decked Out dungeon. Once again it was underground, so no sunlight, as well as the fact that staying there had just enough familiarity to him that using it as kind of a ‘home base’ wouldn’t feel too different. Tango had frequently spent long nights working on his game, so much so that he wouldn’t bother to go back to his base when he was done; he’d just sleep right there among the redstone. Thus, oftentimes when Zed was helping him out or keeping him company he’d do the same thing, as would Impulse. 

After gathering some blankets and pillows, Zed had managed to make himself a cosy little spot to campout in. Upon some deliberation, he went to borrow a bell that had been part of the Decked Out circuitry; Tango wouldn’t miss it. Letting it hang in the air a few feet away from his bed, he now had a good indicator and alarm system for if time happened to unfreeze while he was sleeping, as the bell would fall on the stone floor and make a massive racket. If time was going to restart randomly, he wanted to know about it.

Now that he _finally_ had a place where he could reasonably rest, he settled in for his first “night” in this strange state. At the very least, it was certainly peaceful and quiet.

=====

All things considered, Zed got some decent, uninterrupted sleep - probably because there was nothing to interrupt it, clearly the bell hadn’t fallen. However, when he woke up, he was met with the realisation that he had absolutely no way to tell how long he had been asleep for. Even when he was awake, time was hard to judge since there was no point of reference, but when asleep there was nothing he could use to keep track. 

What he _could_ keep track of, however, was roughly how many “days” whatever this was lasted. He unfolded his paper that he was using to list the hermits and added a tally mark at the top, deciding that each time he woke up, he would add another. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it was the best system he could come up with, and seemed like a good idea just in case he was in this for the long haul.

Ready to face the "new day", Zed was off to go find something to eat, then look for more hermits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i recently learned that the actual layout of the nether makes the sequence of events in this chapter completely illogical! but oh well, wouldnt be the first time i've ignored the logistics of nether travel for the sake of a fic


	4. Hunt The Hermit Part 2

Out of all the hermits living in the jungle, Stress was the only one to be found there in her base. She had been working on some kind of... farm? Or maybe a game? Zed wasn’t quite sure, but it involved redstone. But oh dear - it seemed she’d taken a step backwards and accidentally kicked over a bucket of water, and it had been just in the process of falling over when time had stopped. Huh, what a stroke of luck for her. It would’ve washed away all her redstone, but now Zedaph was here to save the day! He knew well how annoying water could be around redstone. 

It was a simple matter to right the bucket and move it a few feet away. If Stress ever realised what happened, she’d probably be rather confused by the teleporting bucket but hopefully grateful.

===

Joe and Cleo could both be found at Cleo’s zoo. Once again, it was so much stranger for Zed to see multiple hermits stopped while they were interacting, rather than just one on their own. It was just another one of those things that made so much less sense, despite how little sense everything else made anyway. 

It appeared that they had been laughing hard at who knows what. That was kind of nice to see in a slightly sad way - at least _they_ were having fun. 

===

He’d made some interesting discoveries about the way that redstone worked while time was frozen. He could cause dust to light up by powering it, as well as activate most components, but any circuit that required any sort of delay or clock was utterly out of the question. This meant that the vast majority of the redstone in the world was completely non-functional and useless to him. It was especially annoying when a piston door was affected, and he had to find an alternate route into wherever he wanted to go.

He’d discovered this while looking for Mumbo. He hadn’t been in his base, or a few other obvious locations Zed could think to search for him, before remembering that Mumbo had an industrial district. He wasn’t sure where it was in the overworld though, but he could follow signs to get there in the nether. Problem was, he’d forgotten that Mumbo sold passes to gain access through the portal, and only realised when he found himself unable to go any further down the tunnel. So he had to go back to the shopping district, pay for a pass (he wasn’t a thief!), then go back to the portal in the nether again. And when he inserted the pass into the machine, the door couldn’t even open! What a ripoff!

He may not be a thief, but he’d certainly give himself a refund for that.

Regardless, that meant that he wasn’t able to check Mumbo’s industrial district. Perhaps that wouldn’t be a problem, though. When he initially searched the shopping district, he’d completely forgotten about the Pacific skyscraper over in the ocean. That was certainly as good a place to search as any.

Nothing inside the building, he wasn’t underneath among the redstone either... didn’t they have a rooftop pool or something? That must be worth checking.

Apparently so! That was exactly where he found not just Mumbo, but Iskall as well, both dressed in their beach outfits. They had been relaxing on pool inflatables (Mumbo was on a large pink flamingo, while Iskall had gone for a rubber ring), probably chatting about something. Funnily enough, Iskall was the first hermit he’d found who had apparently been caught mid-blink, which resulted in a pretty amusing face - ahh, the things he found entertaining these days.

Somehow, the thought of entertaining himself by playing tricks on his fellow hermits while he had this opportunity hadn’t really crossed his mind. Sure, if he _knew_ what had caused time to stop, and he _knew_ that he would be able to get it to restart again, maybe he’d be willing to have a bit more fun with it, but it was kinda hard to see the bright side when he was faced with being on his own... potentially _forever_... It was easier not to think about it.

=====

Grian was likely to be either very easy to find, or _very_ difficult. There were a few locations he could be reasonably expected to be, mainly the barge or his mansion, but if he wasn’t at any of those, he could be just about anywhere in the world. Not to mention potential countless secret bases or tunnels that Zed couldn’t even _begin_ to guess the location of. The shopping district had already been searched thoroughly, so the barge was off the table, and upon visiting the mansion and spending what must have been ages searching ever nook and cranny he could find, Zed had to conclude that Grian just wasn’t there. Brilliant...

There was a stroke of luck, though. While flying over the jungle on his second trip out to check any spots he might have missed, a flash of red beneath the canopy caught his eye. He’d initially assumed it was a parrot, but no, surely that shade of red was much too dull to be a parrot... it was worth a closer look. His best attempts to slow himself down in the air and descend still resulted in getting caught in various branches and vines, yet he _eventually_ tumbled down for a terribly ungraceful landing on the jungle floor. Ow... 

Oh hey, what he saw had been Grian. Caught flying underneath the canopy between the trees... how unnecessarily show-off-y. There wasn’t even anyone here to show off to! All things considered, Zed wasn’t quite sure that the discovery had been worth the terrible landing.

=====

Keralis’ base had taken an entire day to search - a day being defined as from when Zed woke up to when he got too tired to stay awake - and he hadn’t even been there! Similarly, he’d made the long long trek out to xB’s base to search the place, and found absolutely nothing. 

Coincidentally, the two could actually be found together though. Cub’s pyramid had been rather low on Zed’s mental list of places to search (since he already knew Cub was in the town hall) until he remembered Targét. There hadn’t been anyone in the gaming district, but it was perfectly possible that some of the missing hermits were at the pyramid playing Cub’s target games. 

Sure enough, both xB and Keralis were at Targét, caught in a fierce duel of Cast Masters. It appeared that xB was winning by quite a lot.

=====

Even after all this time, Zedaph still somehow felt a little uncomfortable every time he stepped into another hermit’s base, almost worried that time would suddenly unfreeze and he’d have to explain why he was skulking around certain places that he had no business being. What with how suddenly time had stopped, it didn’t seem impossible for it to randomly start again; it hadn’t happened yet though.

He was certainly glad that that had been the case when he went to check Wels’ home. He’d found the knight in his bedroom... sleeping. Really, Wels? At 11:42 in the morning? Regardless, it would’ve been rather awkward if time had restarted right in the middle of that discovery, especially since Zed hadn’t exactly been bothering to open doors quietly. Fortunately enough, that didn’t happen. 

=====

The prospect of finding TFC had been slightly daunting; he did have a habit of disappearing for many weeks at a time, reappearing whenever it suited him. Zed had been prepared to go on quite the hunt for him, but fortunately he was pleasantly surprised. All he had to do was go down into the hermit’s impressive branch mine and make his way to the end of the newest tunnel, and sure enough TFC was right there, mining away as always.

=====

Etho was hard to find - unsurprisingly, as he always is. Searching his base had revealed no trace of him, his shops had already been ruled out, and he wasn’t at his Hurtin’ Hermits game either. Zed knew he had a couple other bases, at least one in the snow and one in the nether, but he didn’t have a clue where they were, and didn’t quite fancy trawling through the wilderness until he found them.

Luckily, he showed up once Zed had started searching the bases he hadn’t yet checked, since they belonged to hermits that he had already found. They were worth checking though, since a hermit could’ve easily been in the middle of some delivery, or a prank perhaps; for Etho, both of those were equally likely, potentially even the two combined knowing him. 

Bdubs’ base was where Zed finally found him. He appeared to be on his way back to the nether portal, so whatever business he had here must’ve already been done. Who knows what he had been doing, probably something mischievous. Thankfully Etho hadn’t been _trying_ to be sneaky - he must’ve known that Bdubs wasn’t around - otherwise Zed might have never found him.

=====

~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ll

_ Tango - my base _

_ Impulse - his base _

_ Scar, Cub, Bdubs - town hall _

_ Doc - ~~shopping district~~ by potion shop _

_ Beef - music shop _

_ Jevin - nether, nearish shopping portal _

_ Ren - nether tunnel between jungle and shopping _

_ False - her base _

_ Hypno - his base _

_ Stress - her base _

_ Joe, Cleo - Cleo’s zoo _

_ Mumbo, Iskall - Pacific Roof _

_ Grian - jungle _

_ Keralis, xB - Targét _

_ Wels - his house _

_ TFC - his mine _

_ Etho - Bdubs’ base _

...It’d be very awkward if anyone saw this list after this was all over, wouldn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks hcbbs for no longer making this fic timeless o7
> 
> although it is still quite literally "timeless" any way badum-tsss


	5. The Odd One Out

~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ l

The hunt for all of the hermits hadn’t quite been the fun scavenger hunt that Zed had thought he could use to occupy himself. When the hermits got harder to find, and the event of actually finding one got more infrequent, it had just become _work_. 

That wasn’t really the worst thing in the world though. Even if it was just work, work was good. Work kept him busy, and if he kept busy, he could avoid thinking about... certain upsetting possibilities. 

Look, Zedaph _knew_ what prolonged isolation and endless waiting did to a person. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly an unfamiliar concept, but it was something he had hoped he wouldn’t have to experience again. Yet apparently fate had other plans for him, since here he was. Nevertheless, his prior experiences had taught him an important lesson: if he didn’t keep himself busy, his will to do just about anything would crawl to a halt, and he’d be just as stuck as the rest of the hermits.

Giving himself a goal to accomplish was good for him. It kept his mind focused on something when there really wasn’t much else to focus on, and having a complete list of the locations of all the hermits would be a nice and satisfying little reward for all his hard work, even if it was a bit weird.

But the problem was... what then? Once the list was completed, it wasn’t like that would _change_ anything. _Nothing_ had changed over the past days... weeks? Months? He didn’t know! His tally chart was only an estimate, what if it was completed wrong? What if time had been stuck for years!

Okay, admittedly that probably wasn’t the case.

Even still, his tally chart just _wasn’t_ reliable. Occasionally there were “days” where he allowed himself a “day off” from looking for hermits, which ended up becoming a bit of an excuse to lay around, hide under blankets and mope. He would end up falling asleep, on and off, with no way to tell if he’d been asleep for the equivalent of 10 minutes or 10 hours, but recorded each one as a tally for the sake of consistency. Eventually he realised that these “days off” weren’t doing him much good. He tried to put a stop to them as best as he could, but on some occasions it just wasn’t really in his control. Sometimes, just finding the will to get out of bed - to face a world that wouldn’t respond to him - felt impossible.

Zed could recognise the effects of prolonged isolation in himself, although that didn’t make it any easier to deal with. The loneliness had clearly been getting to him, it had been for a while, but he knew he just had force himself to keep moving. At the very least, he had to keep looking for Xisuma, the last hermit to find to finish his list.

=====

Xisuma was tricky - somehow trickier than even Etho or TFC - and that was really rather surprising. He wasn’t normally that elusive at all. Still, it stood to reason that the last hermit that turned up would be in the most obscure place to find, it wasn’t like _everyone_ was going to be easy. He just had to keep looking.

All the same, he didn’t _really_ want to just keep doing the same thing when it was getting so repetitive: check somewhere, Xisuma isn’t there, check somewhere else, Xisuma isn’t there... the cycle continued. At this point Zed was growing desperate for just something different. The hunt for the hermits thus far had occupied the vast majority of his time, but as the work got more tedious, he’d decided to try and give himself breaks in a bit of a healthier way than he had before. That came with trying out some various ways of occupying himself with... mixed results.

He’d tried using the plentiful time he had with designing some contraptions, but it was hard to design circuits that he couldn’t test. He’d tried doing some building, but any amount of creativity or passion was hard to muster, and the idea of having no one to show in the end was unappealing. He’d tried mining and caving, but it was straight up _boring_. There was absolutely no danger, and no point! He had the time to mine and mine until he became the richest hermit in the world, but what was the point?

More than anything, he’d tried restarting time. Over and over, Zed tried the same thing he’d tried immediately after this all started, to no avail. It was like the same cruel joke repeated over and over. It was hard to think what he could possibly do differently; say some magic words? Make some dramatic hand gestures? Go and sit back on the ledge near Tango where this had all started? He’d tried every possibility and every cliché he could think of on multiple occasions - feeling like a bit of an idiot every time - yet nothing had changed. 

But hey, at least it’s hard to actually waste time when time is quite literally unlimited.

All the same, it was certainly better for Zed to do things that at least _felt_ productive. The little pointless endeavours that didn’t accomplish much were kind of demotivating and demoralising, which really was the opposite of what he needed. The act of scouring the world, only finding locations where Xisuma _wasn’t_ may have been laborious, but the more places he searched, the more places he could rule out; thus, time was never _really_ wasted. At the very least he could feel more productive while searching.

=====

It felt like he had searched everywhere. Xisuma’s base was massive, but he was sure he had scoured every inch of it, and even the jungle in between the massive towers. Every build he could remember X working on, every shop, every farm, anything he could think of, he checked everywhere, but their admin was nowhere to be found. He’d searched every area of the nether he could think to, and even spent some time scouting about the wilderness, considering the possibility that X had been off gathering resources or something, but no such luck.

This was especially frustrating, because Xisuma was normally very easy to find! Perhaps one of the most readily available hermits even. He could pretty reliably be found at his base most of the time (even if you had to look around the place for a while), but if not, it wasn’t hard to ask around the other hermits and find out where he was. For some reason, people just tended to know what he was up to most of the time. If Zed was able to ask around, he’d surely find _someone_ that knew where their admin was eventually, but obviously that wasn’t exactly an option right now.

However, there _was_ an awful possibility that Zed didn’t really want to think about...

After a certain point, with every hermit he found he had felt some subtle relief in the back of his mind that they hadn’t been in the End. If a hermit had been in the middle of End-busting when time froze, they’d be near impossible to find. There’d be no trail to follow, no leads or clues, no landmarks to check. Just void, and infinite islands. The world border narrowed things down a bit, sure, but not much...

There was no way he was going to search the entire End. That just wasn’t going to happen. Searching the End wouldn’t be anything like searching the overworld, which was at least interesting and had lots of things to see. The End was just _nothing_. If X was in the middle of nowhere there, Zed would surely lose his mind before he even got close to finding him.

Well... Xisuma being in the End was only a _theory_. Merely a suggestion. Not a certainty, so it wasn’t like he _had_ to search the End, necessarily. Maybe if he just kept up the search in the overworld, he’d turn up. 

=====

~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ~~llll~~ ll

Funnily enough, Xisuma did not turn up. 

The spots that Zed searched kept getting more and more obscure, since there was no purpose in checking any locations twice. He’d even managed to stumble upon a few locations that he hadn’t been able to find initially - such as both Mumbo’s and Iskall’s industrial districts and Etho’s ice base - while randomly flying over undeveloped areas of wilderness, but X was still nowhere to be found. At a loss for any more ideas, he’d started looking through random caves nearby X’s base, but decided that track wasn’t worth pursuing quite quickly; no one really went caving anymore.

Surely, at some point, he just had to let it go, right? It wasn’t like recording the locations of all the hermits was some magic key to solving this situation. He’d always known that this little quest of his had just been something to keep busy, he didn’t _have_ to complete his list if X just happened to be somewhere so obscure that he’d never be found. This was so much effort just for the sake of completionism.

And he was not going to search the entire End for the sake of completionism.

Even still... he did have a theory, a small idea residing in the back of his mind that he’d dismissed at first. A theory that made it very very hard to write off the idea of letting Xisuma’s location remain a mystery, as easy as that would be. 

It felt like wistful thinking, but what if this whole situation wasn’t his fault?

Essentially, if _any_ hermit could _possibly_ be responsible for stopping time aside from Zedaph himself... surely it would have to be their admin. 

That’d be crazy though! Xisuma talked about admin stuff occasionally, and he’d _never_ implied he could affect the flow of time. He didn’t seem _that_ powerful. If X could use his admin powers to stop time, wouldn’t the hermits know about it? And if X _had_ stopped time, why was Zed... unstopped? Surely the one responsible should be the one able to move while time was frozen; that was how it worked in every story told about this concept ever. It just didn’t make any sense. 

It seemed naïve to dare to hope that this situation wasn’t his fault, but all the same, the idea just wouldn’t leave his mind. It didn’t help that it just so happened that if _any_ hermit was going to be in the End, Xisuma _also_ happened to be the most likely candidate... how annoying! He didn’t want to search the End! But the more time he spent thinking about it, the more it seemed like what made the most sense to do.

The way Zed saw it, he had two options. Option one: give up the search, and go mad with boredom and loneliness in the overworld. Option two, try searching the End, and go mad while trying to complete such a mind numbing and long winded task. It wasn’t massively comforting that both options included him going mad, but then again, who was to say he wasn’t already mad? 

No one, to be precise. That was kind of the point. 

Regardless, the latter was certainly the option that was more likely to result in finding Xisuma, and on the off chance that his theory was correct, finding Xisuma seemed to be the only thing that might _possibly_ give him a shot at getting time to restart again. Other than that, he’d pretty much run out of options. 

That said, he was still NOT going to search the entire End. 

Just... take a quick look around the main island. Nothing more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not specifically related to any of this really but the song Inexplicable by The Correspondents suits this fic pretty well i reckon. it makes me think of it at least


	6. Brave Sir Zedaph

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> things are getting EXCITING :D
> 
> honestly this chapter isnt quite as good as i wanted it to be but im just gonna live with it

Just a quick peek was all he needed. There was absolutely no need to commit to a full scale search of the End at this point. That was what Zedaph continually reminded himself while he stood on the edge of the End portal, trying to psych himself up to step in. It _shouldn’t_ be this difficult, he’d travelled to the End many many times just like everyone else, and he’d be able to leave at any time but still... the very sight of the portal made him want to run back to his camp beneath Decked Out, hide under a blanket and never come back. 

No! That was ridiculous! He was being ridiculous. There was absolutely nothing to be afraid of, just as there hadn’t been during the entire period that time had been frozen. Even if being near the portal did give him some sort of indescribable uneasy feeling, that was totally normal, right? It was like what he’d felt in that area beneath the Cave of Contraptions around the void hole; that was just nervousness too. The void is scary at the best of times! And these were far from the best of times.

There was no danger. It’s just nerves. Just like the void hole had made him nervous.

It was painfully obvious that he was stalling. There was certainly no good reason to feel such trepidation, and all he was doing was delaying the inevitable. Even if he did run away to safety and security, surely given enough time he’d be back here eventually, so why not just get this over with? Just a quick peek was all he needed, and that was it. 

Easy. No problem.

He stepped into the portal.

The familiar sensation of falling without moving met him, but less familiar was the way the atmosphere around him seemed to grow thicker, and heavier, and downright _sinister_ as he fell. Any sense of which way was up was lost, and he barely had time to recognise that _this wasn’t right_. 

He landed on the obsidian platform, and everything was **wrong**.

The portal had made Zed feel uneasy, but that was nothing compared to this. His legs had collapsed beneath him and he’d fallen hard on the floor, but he wasn’t even aware of that. He wasn’t aware of forgetting to breathe, or the irrepressible panicked cry he’d let out, or curling into a ball like a frightened animal that had given up hope of escape. The only thing he could focus on was a feeling of utter **despair**. The feeling tore at his heart, his mind, his soul, it pushed down on him and he felt crushed. He couldn’t stand, couldn’t move, couldn’t _think_ , just feel the weight of an ocean assaulting his very being.

It was all so _sudden_ , and so unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. There was no way to pick up the pieces of his mind to even begin to work out what on earth was happening.

This was it.

He was going to die.

He knew it.

It was the _only_ thing he knew.

>>>>>

Something had changed.

Zed opened his eyes to see endstone, and not much else. He was on his hands and knees on the main island, taking hurried, shallow breathes to desperately try and take in air. Not only was he still dealing with mental and physical toll of... of that thing, he was also having to cope with the disorientation of unexpectedly jumping through time.

It took a short while before he was able to calm himself, shift to sit more comfortably, and appreciate the fact that he could actually _think_ again. He needed to work out what on earth was going on - a lot of things had happened very quickly, without any opportunity to process them. 

That was something his powers just did from time to time - they got him out of unfortunate situations that he got himself into, intentionally or not. This time jump hadn’t been intentional at all, but he was certainly grateful for it. There was no way to know or even take a guess at just how far forward he had skipped. Even though he’d decided a very long time ago to just not question the random time jumps - filling in the gaps was rarely that important - this time it felt quite necessary to figure out what he had missed.

He felt certain of one thing: the dreadful feeling hadn’t gone away or improved - it was still very much disturbing, but in the same way as when your eyes adjust to the dark, it felt like his senses had essentially adjusted to the feeling. He must have just fast-tracked through that process which presumably should’ve happened gradually. At the very least, having the ability to think of something other than his own seemingly imminent death was nothing short of relief.

Zed could say for sure that this was _not_ simply nervousness. Something was obviously terribly wrong, something worse than he’d ever encountered before. This was the sort of thing that, under normal circumstances, he would’ve instantly gone to ask Xisuma about. How painfully ironic...

This only reinforced his theory of Xisuma being in the End, which wasn’t a comforting thought by any means. If X knew about whatever had caused this, he’d surely be trying to fix it. What other explanation could there be for him seemingly disappearing off the face of the planet? But if that was the case, any hope of him being in some easy to reach location in the overworld was becoming less and less possible. 

If X was somewhere in the End, and he was the one responsible for stopping time, Zedaph would _have_ to find him. There was no question about it.

Unfortunately that meant having to withstand whatever this... _thing_ was while looking for him. He could only hope that X showed up quickly, but based on how this whole hunt had been going so far, that seemed like too much to wish for.

First, there were some obvious places to check. Enderman farm, no luck. He wasn’t on any of the obsidian pillars mining either. If someone was nearby the main island, those the the main places where they would realistically be, although Zed wasn’t convinced X would be doing something so normal while something was so obviously wrong. Still, it was worth checking.

Wandering around the edge of the main island didn’t yield any results either. It did, however, reinforce that something was badly wrong. The first time he’d peeked over the edge, the sight had sent Zed stumbling backwards from sheer aversion. He’d sat, breathing hard once again, having to work to convince himself to get up and have another look for investigation’s sake. 

When looking down into the void, it should have been the same dark, static-y purple that surrounded the End no matter which direction you look. But it wasn’t; instead, there was some sort of defined separation between the dark, static-y purple, and... some other _thing_. An otherworldly darkness that had carpeted the bottom of the void and seemed to stretch on for miles and miles. It wasn’t moving, it was just... _there_. With no point of reference, it was virtually impossible to tell how far down it really was, but Zed didn’t much fancy finding out. It almost hurt to look at - perhaps hurt wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t painful, but overwhelming and terrifying, which was really not much better.

At this point, he felt a bit lost on what exactly to do. Xisuma just wasn’t on the main island - of course that would’ve been too easy. If he was in the End, which just seemed like the most likely scenario at this point, searching the outer End islands for him would be like looking for a needle in a haystack; not to mention dealing with some impossible force of terrible-ness and a looming feeling of doom the entire time. All in all the task just felt insurmountable. He didn’t want to do it.

Zed was scared. There was no way around it. 

Then again, he’d been scared since this whole situation began. Scared of being alone forever, scared of never being able to talk to anyone ever again, scared of never being able to _do_ anything meaningful in a world that wouldn’t acknowledge that he was living in it. Wandering around the world had allowed him to ignore that fear, most of the time, but it had never really left. Sure, he’d been able to cope (sort of) for this long so far, but _forever_? Forever was a long long time.

Even if searching the End scared him, being stuck like this scared him just as much; if there was even a chance that finding Xisuma was the key to fixing this whole mess, surely he had to try?

He just had to start first.

At least Zed had come well equipped. While he had only expected to spend a short while in the End initially, he’d still made sure to bring plenty of rockets and food, just in case; it was good practice to be prepared in the End. He owed Tango for those supplies, but that was hardly out of the ordinary. 

He was ready to go. There were a full 360 degrees worth of directions he could pick to go in first, and it probably didn’t matter which one he chose given that he had no information. He’d pick an End gateway to go through (they _should_ still work as normal), and fly around until he found X, ignoring the sense of his own impending doom and the carpet of evil all the while.

Easy. No problem.

Spotting Xisuma shouldn’t be too difficult at the very least. Any colours other than black and purple stood out significantly in the End, so the slightest hint of yellow - or possibly green, depending on what X was wearing - would easily catch his eye. All he’d have to do was fly over the right place while keeping an eye out... surely it was only a matter of time?


	7. Don’t Think About It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> honestly? the stuff that happens in this chapter is inconsequential, but its the bit ive been looking forward to most since planning this story out
> 
> also this is the first time im doing an update on mobile so i hope its all formatted right

The boredom and mind-numbing-ness of this task hadn’t been underestimated in the slightest. Fly over that island. Any sign of Xisuma? No? Fly over the next island. Repeat. For hours and hours and hours. Zedaph wasn’t really keeping track of precisely where he’d already been, which was possibly a mistake, but in all fairness it was something extremely hard to do; it wasn’t like there were many landmarks to take note of. Finding X would be just as much a question of luck as it was a question of conviction. That was unfortunate... luck wasn’t something to be relied on.

After many hours of flying and countless islands checked, Zed was quickly understanding that he would not be able to do this all in one go. End-busting trips were normally best kept to a few hours at most, but he was already well beyond that. Admittedly he wasn’t searching End cities, but flying for this long was still hard work by itself.

Flying while tired was a bad idea, but flying over the void while tired was an even  _ worse _ idea. However, flying over the void which had some kind of evil force of devastation in it while not knowing the effects of falling into it was just about the  _ worst _ idea anyone could ever come up with. Zed was a fan of bad ideas, sure, but only  _ fun  _ bad ideas. The prospect of finding out exactly what would happen if he fell into the void in this state was not appealing in the slightest.

It would take just as long to fly all the way back to the portal though, and that wasn’t really a risk he wanted to take. Instead, he’d just take a rest here in the End, maybe try and get some sleep. He’d known he was in this search for the long haul after all.

He could have set up camp just about anywhere, sure, but the idea of sleeping above and below the endless void just made him feel all nervous inside. Maybe it was a bit of agoraphobia kicking in, who knows. Regardless, why do that anyway when there are perfectly habitable End cities dotted around the place? As soon as he decided he needed a break, Zed resolved to stop at the next one he found and try and get some proper rest.

It didn’t take too long to come across one - it even seemed to be unlooted, which was interesting. There wasn’t often an opportunity to really study what shulkers look like inside their shell since most interactions with them merely consisted of a very annoying scrap involving lots of levitation bullets. Here though, one of the shulkers that sat posted on either side of the entryway had been peeking out of its shell when time had stopped and Zed could take a curious look at it.

It wasn’t all that interesting to be honest, just about what he would’ve expected; some grumpy looking stony-faced creature floating in the shell. At least it was a  _ unique _ experience. Nevertheless, he moved on and sat himself down in a corner of the ground floor room, letting his head knock back gently against the wall. There was no need to go through the upper levels; looking for loot didn’t particularly interest him. It was just nice to finally sit for the first time after hours of flying to try and relax a bit, as difficult as that was with the, ah- ‘ever-present doom feeling’.

On the bright side, the bad feeling seemed to be improving a bit - yet he couldn’t quite be sure if it was actually getting better, or he was just getting more used to it. Surely if time was stopped though, this  _ thing _ couldn’t get any better or worse? Unless it transcended time or something, which would be concerning to say the least.

There was another possibility: he could be getting further away from it. He’d assumed that it was just kind of everywhere, but what if there was some kind of epicentre that he’d been moving away from this whole time? That’d be a good thing in theory, but in reality, if Xisuma was trying to deal with it then he’d probably be as close to it as possible, which would mean Zed would have to follow him.

Once again, Zed had some options. He could assume that he was just getting used to the bad feeling or that it was dissipating for some reason, and continue on in the same direction. He could also turn around and retrace his steps, and see if the bad feeling gets worse again. The former was certainly more appealing, since he was hardly enthusiastic about subjecting himself to this thing again - but if he didn’t turn around, what if he just kept going in the complete wrong direction? He could be flying around for the equivalent of weeks and find nothing if he’d just happened to pick the wrong direction at the start. If he turned around, at least he may learn something. This feeling was still awful though, and having to let it get even worse again? Maybe it’d be too much to take.

He did have a third option: after his rest, he  _ could _ just give up and go home and resign himself to a solitary existence. Tempting...

The options weren’t great, but he didn’t have to pick one now. Now, all he had to do was try and get some rest, despite not really coming prepared for comfort. He curled up in a corner of the room, not worried about the open entryway since it wasn’t like anything could harm him while nothing in the world could move. The floor was cold and hard and the terrible feeling still hung over his head, but he was so exhausted from  _ everything _ that he managed to drift off eventually anyway.

=====

That had certainly not been the best undeterminable period of sleep that he’d ever had. The floor of an End city was definitely  _ not _ a comfortable place to rest. That wasn’t a fact that had really needed proving, but it had inadvertently been tested and proved anyway, at the cost of an aching neck and back. Yay, science?

Zed groaned as he sat up, rubbing his eyes before blinking them open, but what he saw in the room with him made him instinctively screw them shut again in an instant. Apparently an enderman had wandered in the open entryway while he’d slept. Luckily it had been facing away from him so he hadn’t met it’s eyes, but there was always the chance it would turn around-

Wait...

Time was supposed to be stopped.

_ There had not been an enderman in here before. _

Was he imagining it? Dreaming? No, no way. Even with his eyes still shut, he could hear the idle sound of the enderman’s chirps as clear as day. They were real. With as much caution as he could muster, he opened his eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on the floor before slowly looking up at the creature’s spindly legs, as not to anger it. It was most definitely not imaginary, and most definitely  _ not stopped . _

Was it finally over?

His achy back was completely forgotten. Keeping his eyes down, Zed clumsily scrambled to his feet and made his way to the entrance where the two shulkers would still be. He needed more confirmation, any sign of life or movement at all.

But... no. He was filled with disappointment as the one shulker was still half-open, peaking out, which they never did for long unless they had a target. Neither one responded to him tapping on their shells either, which he knew they  _ hated _ . They were just as frozen as they had been before. Another classic test of trying to drop something (a firework) and seeing it hang in the air showed clearly that time had not spontaneously restarted.

_So why on earth was there an enderman wandering about?_

Zed darted back into the End city, still careful to avoid the enderman that had wandered in, and ran up the stairs to the second floor where there would be glass windows he could look through for a better view outside without potentially angering any endermen - if they really were unfrozen.

From this vantage point, he could safely look around the End island to see that endermen were dotted about and moving  _ all over the place _ . Not with much purpose, as usual, but there was no doubt that they had evaded the stopping of time, just like him. It was a good thing he’d thought to use the window, because he couldn’t stop himself from staring. It was so much _movement,_ more than he’d experienced in a month. If it hadn’t been for the glass, he’d certainly be making a lot of enemies right now.

What a strange discovery - how on earth had he not noticed before? He supposed that he just hadn’t expected anything at all to be moving, so he simply hadn’t noticed that the endermen that he’d passed by hadn’t been frozen at all. He just hadn’t been looking for it. This whole time that time had been stuck, he hadn’t been quite as alone as he’d thought, although the endermen didn’t count for much really. They didn’t exactly make great conversation.

The meaning behind this was just another thing to add to his long list of unanswered questions, which hadn’t been updated in a while. The fact that he wasn’t really alone in this time-locked state just made things even more confusing. Why endermen, of all things? Sure, they could teleport, but it wasn’t like they could _time travel_ like he could.

Or could they?

No one had ever given it much thought, but now that he stopped to consider it, it didn’t seem impossible. A conversation that he’d had with Impulse stood out in his mind. It was the one where Impulse had observed that Zed’s powers looked more like teleportation, while Zed had insisted that it was indeed time travel. Was it possible that they had all been wrong about endermen in the same way?

What if they were jumping through their own timelines just like him?

Just like him...

If he was being honest, Zed didn’t have a clue  _ where _ his powers came from, or  _ why  _ he had them. Tango had certainly tried to interrogate him on the subject on multiple occasions, but was disappointed to find that Zed just didn’t have any answers. He couldn’t remember ever  _ not _ having them, so it was just easier not to think about it.

But if his power really did work in the same way as an enderman’s...

You know what? It was  _ definitely _ easier not to think about it.


End file.
